The Xylophoniad by robinjohnson

The King of Anachronopolis has ordered you to end the Trojan War, slay the dreaded Bicyclops, and rescue a couple of inmates from Hades. A comic adventure set in ancient Greece, with an assortment of locations and characters from Greek mythology.

I can't play this. I got stuck in something, which I think I know what it is, but won't spoil it. I kept moving around but never finding a way out, or anything that changed anything. You may want to think of adding a map.

This is another high quality, award-winning game from Robin Johnston. It is of similar length and difficulty to Detectiveland and Draculaland. Unlike those games, however, Xylophoniad has a traditional text adventure format, with command line input. It is again built with Robin’s own game engine, Versificator, and he has also provided the very impressive artwork for the game cover and the game characters.

Being more familiar with Quest, I was initially confused by Versificator’s requirement that object names be given in full, with anything not recognised receiving a default response. That means, for example, when playing the game as Xylophone, and typing “x Xylo,” the response is “Nothing special,” rather than giving the player description or indicating that the name has not been recognised.

Once tuned in, however, I was able to thoroughly enjoy the game and particularly appreciated its humour and general creativity. For example, the concept of a two-eyed cyclops named Bicyclops is comic genius! I was also grateful that ‘death’ didn’t mean ‘death’ in the game, as the player can simply type “undo” afterwards!!

Overall, there is much to like, especially if you have an interest in Greek history and/or legends so I suggest you jump and explore.

Impressive detail and vivid imagery! I liked the idea that you are offered tasks to perform. A little difficult for a beginner like me though... Even with the plenty of help that was provided. But I guess that's just me.